A blog about poetry, literature, and art, that occasionally engages other issues of importance and interest.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Two Posts of Interest

My partner, anthropologist and cultural theorist Robert Philen, has two very interesting recent posts on his blog.

The first post, "Longfellow, George Will, Poetry, and the Artist or Individual Thinker", discusses the different cultural status of poetry in America between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first century, the ideas of accessiblity and difficulty in art (which I have also addressed several times in this blog), and the relationship of art to the artist's biography or social context (arguing, as I have done as well, that the one is not determined by the other).

The second post, prompted by a performance we saw together of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, is called "Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and the Experience of Art (Musical and Visual)", discusses the difference in the experience of live musical performance or original works of art from the experience of art in reproduction, as well as the greater conservatism of audiences for "classical" or "serious" music as compared to the audiences for visual art.

2 comments:

Thanks for these Reginald. I am especially impressed by 'Darwin's Unfinished Letter'. I'm wondering if the fragments are lifted in their entireity from the letter/notes (i.e., truly 'found' poems), if she manipulated the language, using a collage technique, or if she simply invented/imagined most of it.

About Me

Reginald Shepherd is the editor of The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (University of Iowa Press, 2004) and of Lyric Postmodernisms (Counterpath Press, 2008). He is the author of: Fata Morgana (2007), winner of the Silver Medal of the 2007 Florida Book Awards, Otherhood (2003), a finalist for the 2004 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, Wrong (1999), Angel, Interrupted (1996), and Some Are Drowning (1994), winner of the 1993 Associated Writing Programs’ Award in Poetry (all University of Pittsburgh Press). Shepherd's work has appeared in four editions of The Best American Poetry and two Pushcart Prize anthologies, as well as in such journals as American Poetry Review, Conjunctions, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Yale Review. It has also been widely anthologized. He is also the author of Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry (Poets on Poetry Series, University of Michigan Press). Shepherd has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, the Florida Arts Council, and the Guggenheim Foundation, among other awards and honors.